Month: December 2016

THE TEENAGE GIRL’S ROBOT ARMY Rawle Nyanzi From the backyard of her two-story home outside Brisbane, eighteen-year-old Carmen Bronsted monitored her legions of machines as they advanced through the Australian outback. Tablet in hand, she … [continue]

PRICE OF ALLEGIANCE Alex Shvartsman “Mr. Tobin, there is a Cicada here to see you.” Alastair Tobin, Earth’s ambassador to the Galactic Union, was more than a little surprised. In his eight years of service … [continue]

In Larry Niven’s Known Space Universe, humanity finds itself, early in its exploration of space, under attack by the Kzinti, a race of carnivorous felinoids. Far more advanced than the humans at the beginning, the … [continue]

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN August von Orth My Fireball XL5 spaceship crashed on Mercury. The ninety degree heat transformed the curb in front of my house—mostly crumbled to rubble—into a great planet Mercury. The strange … [continue]

CLOSE ENOUGH J.R. Johnson After the hospitals, the grief, and all the damn flowers, Patrick Cole figured killing Hackett would be the easy part. Cole edged past the concrete lions flanking the pretentiously long driveway … [continue]

FRANK HERBERT, PHOTOJOURNALIST Erik Jorgensen Famous people typically have mundane pasts in unknown places before they stepped into the limelight. Some have greatness dropped upon them, but others become overnight successes only after years and … [continue]

COUCH, WITH A LABRADOR Shauna O’Meara What Garry didn’t expect, as he affixed the cap of electrodes to the dog’s shaved cranium and took up the ham sandwich from the bench beside him, was for … [continue]